6 Replies Latest reply: Sep 13, 2011 1:08 PM by Mike Gondek2 RSS

    No handles on shapes

    charlenee Community Member

      I have a legacy document, a huge complex map, that I am updating. I am having trouble because I cannot see handles on the shapes unless I roll my cursor over them. I had 2 interns work on the document this past summer and who knows what they have done to it because it worked fine before. My fear is, one of them was a programmer and might have customized something that I cannot fix. If I make a new document I have handles and Illustrator works fine. The problem seems to be in this document.

        • 1. Re: No handles on shapes
          Larry G. Schneider CommunityMVP

          What happens if you hit the toggle Cmd(Ctrl)-H (Show/Hide Edges)? Does that help?

          • 2. Re: No handles on shapes
            Mike Gondek2 Community Member

            Look in the upper left to see hat type of item you have selected.

            Picture 1.png Picture 3.png

            Also look in the appearance palette

            Picture 2.png

             

            Unfortunately masked objects will plainly say group, as in the first screenshot. My best guess is you have a symbol. You would see an edit symbol button in the top bar that you want to use.

            Picture 6.png

             

            If you have a masked object, there will be a button to edit contents(looks like a circle with a dot in the middle.

             

            Picture 5.png

            • 3. Re: No handles on shapes
              charlenee Community Member

              I tried all these hints and no luck. I cannot select the shape on the fill. I have to use the path edge to select and I cannot see all the anchor points when I do select it. Do you think I may have reached a threshold on my paths and the program is not functioning? The file is huge. I checked and they definitely are not symbols.

               

              One thing one of the interns said there was a lot of masking and she removed them. I cannot see that there are any masks left. I want the file to be all basic shapes for easy editing.

              • 4. Re: No handles on shapes
                charlenee Community Member

                No it does not do anything - at least I still cannot see all my anchors.

                • 5. Re: No handles on shapes
                  charlenee Community Member

                  I solved it. It must have been corrupted. I rebuilt the document layer by layer and it works now. I think there was just too many legacy elements. I also deleted suspicious grouped items.

                   

                  Thanks for all your help!

                  • 6. Re: No handles on shapes
                    Mike Gondek2 Community Member

                    Huge files (eg: maps) are more difficult to troubleshoot because of the massive amounts of elements. In Illustrator CS4 Adobe changed how mask works, which makes getting to the contents of masks more difficult. To see if you have masks flip your layers palette triangles, when you see clipping path that means you still have masks.

                     

                    Picture 1.png

                     

                    Select your object, and look into the tranparency palette. If you have a second icon (the gradient in mine), you have elements being used as transparency.

                     

                    Picture 4.png

                     

                    Hard to narow down what is causing your problem, but a screenshot would be helpful, so we can see what you have selected and how illustrator is reacting to that.